Milk: I got milk.com!

People occasionally email me about buying the domain milk.com from me. I used to respond to such requests with, "How much are you offering?" These days, if you don't mention a number, I probably won't mail you back. However, let me warn you that I like the name and I have a reasonably well-paying job, so it'll have to be a pretty damn good offer. Note that a number (in whole U.S. dollars) which includes fewer than 7 significant digits to the left of the decimal point does not constitute "pretty damn good" in my book, and in order to really get my attention, consider offering 8. For the mathematically-disinclined, this means that I think $1 million is lowball, and $10 million will almost certainly make me cave. The GreatDomains valuation model seems to agree with me on this. (As of February 2001, the estimate based on their publicly-available valuation chart would have the domain be worth something in the range of $500 thousand to $10 million.)

Many people ignore the above and still seem to insist that I should be willing to take less. Keeping in mind that, as I said, I like the name, realize now that if I'm going to sell out, I'm going to do it right. Furthermore, I've done my research.

According to publicly available documents, the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Program has annual revenues of approximately $110 million. They use this to fund various marketing efforts, including a couple of ad campaigns, among other things. Clearly, if these guys wanted it, they could afford my domain.

I don't have an official link for the California Milk Processor Board, but according to this article in the UC Davis Innovator, in 1999 their revenues were a more modest $27 million a year, which they use for the "got milk?" ad campaign among other things. Maybe it'd be a bit more of a stretch for them, but they could afford it too if they wanted.